Building a small lumber/log hauler for the ATV

[Brmorgan]

This week I got down to remodeling a little trailer I picked up at one of the rural garbage transfer stations back in the spring. This is what it started out like:

Those tires were not on it when I found it; they're solid rubber tires I had found another time that happened to fit. They should be good for a pretty hefty load. They handled the 24' beam I put up in the shop with no effort back in the spring anyway.

On Thursday I cut the top frame off, extended and raised the tongue a bit (not nearly done there, more later), replaced and beefed up the back crosspiece, added three stabilizer crossmembers in the middle, and to keep weight down, added some expanded steel mesh for decking. Time will tell how well it holds up to log hauling, but nothing's stopping me from putting something over it to protect it in that case anyway.

Today, I worked on making stake pockets and removable side stakes for it. Started out with some 3" lengths of 2" perf squaretube to be welded on the trailer for pockets. The 1-3/4" perf squaretube will be the base for the quick-removal sides, and the 3/8" X 1-1/2" flatbar as stabilizers for the stakes. Pics explain it better, so here they are all welded up:

Man, I love how 6013 welds come out looking. So much cleaner. 7018 and 6011 don't seem to like the zinc coating on the perf squaretube all that much; 6011 makes an ugly porous weld and the 7018 seems to want to drop the arc more than normal and is hard to control. But it might just be my welder, who knows. DC+ though as usual and it seems to do fine on plain mild steel.

A closer view of the front side stakes roughed out and mounted. I want them to be able to tip down quickly like a logging truck's bunks, but still be strong when upright, so what I plan on doing is milling a channel out between the two sets of holes in the stakes. This way I can just pull the bottom pin, pull the stake up two inches, and lay it down, and reinstall the pin. These stakes are 21" long; the trailer deck is about 27" wide. They're 1-1/2" squaretube, which fits down into the 1-3/4" perf squaretube with just a little bit of play. Once both bolts (or pins) are installed they don't move at all though.

I was hoping to get all four stakes done today, but as you can see I kinda ran out of daylight. It's not as dark as the camera's flash makes it look though, but I was down working on this until about 8:30 or so. I'm going to have a way of chaining the tops of the stakes together to ease the load on them in case a log rolls or something as well.

What I plan on doing is making two of the stakes much longer than the others, say maybe 36" or so. I designed the stake bases so that when the stakes are laid over they're just slightly higher than the wheels. So if I had two long stakes, I could just as easily lay them over on the outboard side and use them as ramps to roll logs onto the trailer. I don't plan on using this thing for anything very big, just 8" up to MAYBE 16" diameter Pine and D Fir, 8-10' long. I need a couple hundred feet of 8X8 for retaining walls and the like, so I don't need very big timber for that.

This trailer also has a tilt deck, so I could always drag a log on from the backside as well. Ultimately I plan on building a small winch crane on it, probably up on the tongue once I figure out my final design for that. I need to make it a gooseneck of some sort, because its long wheelbase makes the spot where I raised the tongue ground out pretty easily. I'm going to flip my hitch around on the quad to see where that puts it, but I need to keep the trailer deck level or the tail end of any longer pieces will drag too much.

This thing will be a works-in-progress for a while yet. I want to make it very modular and easy to change for different uses; I plan on making solid sides for it so I can use it for yard waste and whatnot, for example. If anyone has any genius ideas, throw 'em out there; now's the time for me to incorporate any that might be useful.

 

[BobL]

Looks Good Brad. What kind of total dead weight do you reckon it will be good for?

 

[mtngun]

That's a well thought out mini logging trailer, Brad.

How's business at your lumber mill ? While I was perusing the wildfire news, I thought I read something about one of the Williams Lake mills closing ?

 

[Brmorgan]

Looks Good Brad. What kind of total dead weight do you reckon it will be good for?

Thanks. I have no idea how to figure out how much weight it'll take. The tires will take a good half ton no problem though, I think, and there's no suspension to worry about. As-is, the tongue would not bear that much weight well unless it was quite tail-heavy.

Glad to see you got home safe and sound. Everything as you left it?

That's a well thought out mini logging trailer, Brad.

How's business at your lumber mill ? While I was perusing the wildfire news, I thought I read something about one of the Williams Lake mills closing ?

Hm, I'm not sure; pretty sure it isn't us though, or it's news to me! The one Tolko mill will run their planer for a week or two as needed and then shut down again, but I haven't heard of any new total closures. Our mill is probably not large enough to make the news though. A couple of the bigger mills out by us might have shut down because of all the smoke though; I know my cousin pulled the plug at the fingerjoint mill he manages a few days ago. The funny thing is that if the air quality was that bad inside the mill because of something happening inside the mill, WCB/WorkSafe would shut us down, but there isn't much they can do in this case because they'd have to shut everyone down (not just the mills) and that just isn't feasible.

 

[mtngun]

The one Tolko mill will run their planer for a week or two as needed and then shut down again

OK, I went back and read the fine print, it was the Tolko Soda Cr. mill and the shutdown is only for two weeks, not the end of the world.

Good to see you posting projects again, in any event.

 

[qbilder]

Nice job!!! I gotta get me one of those....errrr build me one. I need something that I can pull around the woods, and also use to pull my small bandmill into the woods to cut on site.

 

[Brmorgan]

OK, I went back and read the fine print, it was the Tolko Soda Cr. mill and the shutdown is only for two weeks, not the end of the world.

Good to see you posting projects again, in any event.

OK, that makes sense. They're right across the road from us; it's the backend of their logyard that was in the photo that Bob posted a couple weeks ago in another thread. They're a studmill just like us, and stud values are garbage right now. If it weren't for the Chinese orders we're working on right now, we'd be down too since we can't make money on studs at all. Sounds like the they'll take about as much of the stuff as we can produce right now though, so hopefully that holds up for a while until construction rebounds a bit on this continent.

Yeah it feels good to be getting some projects out the door and behind me. They still keep adding up faster than I can get to them though! I hate feeling overwhelmed, but that seems to be par for the course anymore in my life. Always a distraction somewhere! Like today, I came home from the scrapyard with yet another project Stihl...

 

[BobL]

Thanks. I have no idea how to figure out how much weight it'll take. The tires will take a good half ton no problem though, I think, and there's no suspension to worry about. As-is, the tongue would not bear that much weight well unless it was quite tail-heavy.

I guess ultimately it's the load weight the ATV can take managed

Glad to see you got home safe and sound. Everything as you left it?

Yeah - a quick look around suggests everything looks OK.

Just before I left I felt like I didn't have enough decent Canadian souvenirs and so I flashed the credit card in the local Lee Valley store and picked up these.

Nice thing about these is I can use them even with my fingers in splints.

Interestingly the small suitcase these were packed in (together with a bunch of CS parts) were inspected by both US and AUS customs. Probably the weight of the suitcase drew attention to itself.

 

[Brmorgan]

Bob, I didn't realize you had also posted those planes over here as well. Sorry I missed it!

Anyway, after work today I got the two longer posts cut and drilled:

Still an enormous amount of work to do to it, and a lot of finishing touches to be worked out, but it's functional so I decided to grab the saw and take it out back in the bush to try it out. The long posts are 4'; it's a bit high to worry about snagging them in the bush but if I drove around with them folded down it wouldn't be so bad.

Here's a decent candidate just a couple hundred yards out in the bush. Gonna put 'er down right between the two small ones that make a bit of a "V" in behind. Straight towards the camera would have been ideal, but it had a rather heavy lean in the other direction and I didn't feel like playing around with trying to fall it against its lean when alone in the bush. Between those trees gives me room to drive the trailer down beside it fairly easily too.

See, told ya so! Went down perfectly. It's got a bit of a sweep to it, but I need a bunch of shorter 8-10' pieces anyway, so no worries. The ported 371XP is so much fun to go falling with in wood this size. It just chews through the wood with the 8-pin rim on there, even with the aggressive profile I give it. It's a bit grabby but cuts so fast if you can keep a steady hand. Can kick like a mule when limbing too!

I could have cut another inch of holding wood or so, but it went down nice and slow and controlled this way and didn't tear out very bad at all. Didn't have to cut much off the butt to square it up!

Cut off a ~9-1/2' length, basically as much as I could get before the tree it was up against. Got the big 4' cant hook there, with another short-handled one at the ready as well so I could have one in each hand. Ready to roll!

 

[Brmorgan]

That went fairly well. It wanted to slide on the rails a bit, naturally, but it wasn't so heavy that I couldn't control it. Once it was up high on the rails, I held it in place and grabbed one rail in each hand and lifted, tipping the log all the way onto the trailer. The whole procedure took maybe a bit over a minute. I plan on welding some Coleman strips to the rails to keep the logs from sliding, and perhaps a couple dogs to help hold them a bit.

Still plenty of room on the trailer, so I decided to go down below to the trail that the top fell across, and load up a 10' piece about 10" down to 8" diameter. The rails are really unnecessary here since I could easily manhandle this log end by end.

Threw on a couple small pieces of the top for firewood and good measure. It could still handle more weight; the quad didn't even know it was back there and took hardly any throttle to get moving. The engine brake held really well going downhill too.

I'm really happy with how it held this weight, and the solid-rubber tires ride really nicely and don't bounce around at all with the weight on them. I'm guessing this is probably in the neighborhood of 400 lbs or so, maybe toward 450. It's riding a bit tail heavy right now, but it really needs a level hitch to sit right, and I only had a drop hitch handy, which was much too low dropped down, so I had to raise it. I have some 1-1/4" heavy squaretube, so a level hitch will be next on the project list, I guess.

I'm thinking I might move the deck back a foot or so, so I can load it forward a little bit more and take a bit more length without tail-dragging. I'm also considering goose-necking the tongue a little bit to get some more clearance there. Many tie-down and chaining points will also be added all around.

One addition I want to make is a hand winch system to put on the side opposite the rails to roll logs on. Since the loading rails can be put on either side, the winch would also need to be able to move. Not sure if I should put it on its own post, or on a crossbar between the two short side posts, or a combo of the two somehow.

This thing is going to let me move a lot of small logs really quickly. It took me less than an hour from the time I took the saw out of the cargo box until I was headed for home loaded up.

 

[BobL]

Nice work Brad -

 

[Ted J]

Brad,
If you replace the tongue of the trailer with a perferated tube to act like an expandable tongue, that way you can move in and out as needed, to make it longer or shorter for whatever log lengths your hauling.

Ted

 

[sawkiller]

What about some of the expanded metal on your loading ramps for log traction?

 

[stipes]

Nice !!!

Pretty good load for a atv!!!

 

[SPM in King]

What about some of the expanded metal on your loading ramps for log traction?

...or some teeth welded to the face of the ramps every 4-6" or so. This is what the WM ramps have on them. Small bits of metal, perhaps 3/8" thick by 1" wide by 1/2" long (I could measure but this should do it).

 

[Brmorgan]

...or some teeth welded to the face of the ramps every 4-6" or so. This is what the WM ramps have on them. Small bits of metal, perhaps 3/8" thick by 1" wide by 1/2" long (I could measure but this should do it).

Yep that's what those Coleman strips I talked about earlier are:

They're replaceable toothed inserts for feedrolls and such at the sawmill. I have a bunch of 6" and 8" lengths downstairs somewhere. They're very durable and hard, and easy to weld unlike that darn expanded mesh stuff.

I've been mulling over some designs for dogs to hold the logs on the ramps; I want to make them on springs so they'll flip down as I roll the log over them and then pop up behind it to stop it rolling back again. Shouldn't be too difficult to do.

 

[BIG JAKE]

Looks pretty good so far Brad-you'll get it tweaked in. Was looking at the ground clearance of the thing and had the idea you could raise the deck 3-4 inches with two rails under the deck(if you find you need more) depending on the tubes you use. Would be able to get slightly longer logs on then. Lengthen the tongue maybe? Wouldn't weld too solid in case you want to reconfigure later it'll be easier to get apart. I like it-great find!

 

[Brmorgan]

Looks pretty good so far Brad-you'll get it tweaked in. Was looking at the ground clearance of the thing and had the idea you could raise the deck 3-4 inches with two rails under the deck(if you find you need more) depending on the tubes you use. Would be able to get slightly longer logs on then. Lengthen the tongue maybe? Wouldn't weld too solid in case you want to reconfigure later it'll be easier to get apart. I like it-great find!

Yeah I have thought about raising the deck, and am leaning towards doing so, but I don't want to go too high because it's just that much higher I'll have to roll/lift the logs to load it. It would be easy to do though - the deck is just welded to two pieces of pipe that are around the axle; this also acts as the tilt hinge. I'd just need to break the welds and put some 2" squaretube inbetween the deck and the axle and weld it all into place.

I was off work today (well, had to put in 2 hours this morning to make up some time I owed) so I stopped by one of the industrial supply stores to pick up half a dozen Coleman strips to augment the few I already had:

The ones I had are on the right, new ones on the left. They're ever so slightly different, not like it matters or I care though.

I got the strips welded onto the long rails, and I also cut a channel out between the mounting holes at the base of each. Just took the angle grinder with a Zip disc and cut a line between the holes, and cleaned them up with the die grinder afterwards. It works really well. I never have to remove the top bolts now; just pop the bottom one, lift the post so it's clear of the stake pocket, and lay it over.

So that's the haul from last evening and today. The Doug Fir logs all came from the one tree I took down, plus another ~18' of top that's in the firewood log pile. I got that whole tree back in just three trips - two big logs each time plus whatever small ones I could find to round out the loads - and then went back for a couple small Pines that were down on the ground near where I was working. I ended up fitting five trees plus a couple other random small pieces on that load. Not bad.

 

[BobL]

So that's the haul from last evening and today. The Doug Fir logs all came from the one tree I took down, plus another ~18' of top that's in the firewood log pile. I got that whole tree back in just three trips - two big logs each time plus whatever small ones I could find to round out the loads - and then went back for a couple small Pines that were down on the ground near where I was working. I ended up fitting five trees plus a couple other random small pieces on that load. Not bad.

Pity you didn't have that stash read to go when I was there, I could have given you a hand to whip them into some useful lumber!

 

[Brmorgan]

Pity you didn't have that stash read to go when I was there, I could have given you a hand to whip them into some useful lumber!

Yeah, that would have been great, but as I remember it we were already a bit short on time!

It was kind-of a chicken-and-egg situation; I could have hauled those logs with stuff I already had, but it would have been more work and taken a lot longer. So I wanted to get that other trailer put together first and then start on the logs. This way it only took me a grand total of about 3.5 hours to cut and limb all that wood and get it back to the house in four trips. Those small logs will give me a good boost to the firewood pile too. I like having a good stack of small stuff like that; I don't have to bother with splitting it, and it burns more slowly when left round than when split.